Cairo. Open City

The exhibition presented photographic works which highlight the Arab Spring in Cairo. In this age of digital recording technology and the omnipresence of images on the Internet, photography is playing a key role as a medium of direct testimony and self-presentation. In addition to private snapshots taken on mobile phones, visitors were able to view journalistic or documentary photos which depict the revolutionary events as they unfolded on Tahrir Square and the streets of Cairo. The exhibition investigated the role that pictures play in representing the Arab Spring and which players and public forms they reach and influence. The curators from Egypt and Germany were not only interested in exploring the relationship between the photos and their wide range of interpretation and usage in photography and art, but also the dialogue between graduates and students of art, photography and visual studies at the Universities of Braunschweig and Nîmes. These young scholars spent three weeks in Cairo collaborating with their Egyptian counterparts. The project was organized in cooperation with the École Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Nîmes and an artists’ collective in Cairo.

On display were works by artists Peter van Agtmael, Lara Baladi, Taha Belal, Osama Dawod, Kaya Bekhalam, Johanna Domke & Marouan Omara, Hala Elkoussy, Mohamed Ezz, Nermine Hammam, Ahmed Kamel, Nadine Khan, Jasmina Metwaly, Philip Rizk, by photo journalists with the newspaper El Shourouk and photographers of Magnum Photos, by countless activists and “citizen journalists” who were present at Tahrir Square and by young Egyptian, German and French artists.

Artistic director: Florian Ebner, Constanze Wicke

Curators: Randa Shaath, Tamer El Said, Lara Baladi, Heba Farid; Alexandra Stock (curator of the Townhouse Gallery Cairo), Bettina Lockemann, Dörte Eißfeldt, Katharina Sykora, Brigitte Bauer (F)

Braunschweig, 267 locations for contemporary art and photography, 28 Sep - 23 Dec 2012

Additional venues:
- 5. Europäischer Monat der Fotografie Berlin, 19.10. - 25.11.2012
- Museum Folkwang Essen, 2.3. - 5.5.2013
- Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, 16.8. - 17.11.2013